1968 TET OFFENSIVE: The Beginning of the End for Continued U.S. Involvement in Vietnam

 The Vietnam War after the Tet Offensive of 1968

 The 1968 “Tet” Offensive spread out across South Vietnam between 30 and 31 January. The offensive produced shock both politically and militarily in the capital cities of Saigon and Washington D.C. The purpose of the offensive, in the extreme, was for Hanoi to cause a general uprising across the beleaguered cities of South Vietnam; a ‘popular enjoining’ of the fight by sympathetic South Vietnamese against the South Vietnamese government and her mighty ally, the United States.

Sam Adams, a CIA analyst who was stationed in Vietnam at the time, believes Hanoi’s chief objective was to “jolt American public opinion right before the American elections. And in my view they succeeded in spades in doing that.[1]

And at minimum, to cause chaos, sow worry and concern for South Vietnamese citizens and Americans alike, and to influence American public opinion. Surely the calculus of the North Vietnamese took into consideration the free press of the United States and they understood all too well that this war, unlike any other, was a ‘televised war’ with instant influence.

Walter Cronkite, the news anchor that probably best represented the faith of all Americans said in his news cast during the Tet offensive “But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victims, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could.”[2]

Politically, President Johnson found himself in a most worrisome and boxed in position as previous to the ‘Tet Offensive’, the American commander in Vietnam, General William Westmoreland, had made mention in late 1967, that the American and South Vietnamese forces ‘had turned the corner.’ The Tet offensive would change all of that.

Attitudes began to change markedly as President Lyndon Johnson, after Tet, halted the bombing of North Vietnam and opened negotiations with the enemy, both the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong insurgents.[1]

For years the Johnson administration had been selling to the American people ‘a quick victory is in sight, give us some time, give us more, and more troops, but we’ll win.’ “The Tet Offensive showed that Johnson and Westmoreland were lying about having “reached an important point where the end begins to come into view,” as Westmoreland famously had said.”[2]

Many histories have indicated that after the ‘Tet offensive’, the U.S. strategy waned and fighting decreased as the U.S. prepared for an end. It is interesting to see statistically, that U.S. operations actually increased after the ‘Tet offensive’ but that politically, the U.S. for all practical purposes, lost the war. Militarily, the U.S. simply increased bombing of both North Vietnamese (NVA) forces in the field and in North Vietnam proper.

Of the 12 bloodiest months of the Vietnam War, the ones in which the largest numbers of Americans were killed in action, eight came after Johnson’s speech. Four of those eight were in 1969, after Richard Nixon became president.[3]

The strategy that took hold after February-March 1968 was one of preparing for exit, handing off the fight to the South Vietnamese and engaging in Peace talks with Hanoi. The peace talk’s stalled and combat operations simply continued.

The most significant political change post-Tet offensive, was an acceptance that the war would not be won. Subsequently, the Nixon administration, having won election based on the very idea of withdrawing from the Vietnam War, implemented a program of ‘Vietnamization.’ The concept here was to reinforce the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam (ARVN) with firepower and equipment, reducing the footprint of U.S. forces in South Vietnam, and providing advisory assistance at the Battalion and Regiment level. All of this was to serve as the opening for America’s exit from an unpopular war.

Peace talks carried on with starts and stops as Henry Kissinger flew back and forth between Washington D.C., New York, and Paris. As talks stalled, President Nixon ordered the bombing of prohibited targets across North Vietnam. ‘Operation Linebacker’ I and II in 1972 essentially forced the North Vietnamese to accept peace and U.S. forces withdrew during a ceasefire in 1973. Saigon fell less than two years later in 1975 as North Vietnamese armor rolled in.

The ‘so what’ of the 1968 ‘Tet Offensive’ are several fold. U.S. commanders assumed firepower and more combat troops would eventually defeat the Viet Cong (VC) insurgency and the North Vietnamese. The shock of the ‘Tet offensive’ just prior to the elections in the United States, unhinged support for the war and exposed the Johnson administration to the reality of the situation across South Vietnam. As such, lacking support domestically, the United States admitted that ‘winning the war’ was not realistic and subsequently prepared plans for some type of end to the conflict. Successive Presidents, Nixon and lastly Ford, all fully accepted that the Vietnam War was lost and that every effort was to be made for exit.

Militarily, it should be noted that Westmoreland was ultimately replaced by Abrams. And that of the destruction and collapse of the South Vietnamese ‘Viet Cong’ during the ‘Tet offensive’ did little to end the hostility. Once the war was lost politically, there would be no face saving military victory.

Politically, one can now see that the messy politics of Saigon and the government of South Vietnam was tenuous at best, fragile, and unable to stand on its own. The idea that the Republic of South Vietnam would ever stand on its own, secure itself from the Communist North, or embrace democracy was improbable. The ‘Tet offensive’ in the end, despite the destruction of the Viet Cong, can probably be attributed as a success. The live broadcast imagery, Cronkite’s comments and Westmoreland’s lackluster explanations, sealed the fate of U.S. ambition in Vietnam.

In addition, the ‘Line Backer Operations’ probably did more damage to North Vietnam than any other action for the whole of the conflict. The U.S. Army was certainly ill-prepared for limited conflict and a counter-insurgency fight of the scope and scale required (i.e. incursions into Cambodia, possibly Laos, and a more vigorous assault on the Communist North). The U.S. Army/ARVN never did secure the South Vietnamese populace in any meaningful way. Additionally, U.S. policy planners forced the ARVN to organize itself more in line with a standard American Division preparing for conflict in say, Europe, rather than as light, mobile, counter-guerilla units adapted for the jungle foes such as the VC and NVA.

Perhaps most damning militarily, beyond the counterinsurgency/pacification efforts required within South Vetnam, was  the campaign against Hanoi; the early prohibitions against bombing strategic target’s across the whole of the north for example. The strategic picture presented a case for a ‘limited war’ with the goal of not expanding the war beyond Vietnam proper which would have drawn in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) or the Soviet Union. 

Consequently, American commanders tried so very hard. The U.S. Armed Forces had to simultaneously fight a war against guerillas and organized, seasoned, North Vietnamese forces in the jungles of Indochina, pacifiy villages and the 450 districts in  South Veitnam, and build out the Armed Forces of the Republic of Vietnam. They indeed tried hard, with consequences that continue to haunt us today.

 

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[1] Kirk, Donald, “How the Tet Offensive Broke America”, Vietnam 1967, The New York Times, 2 March 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/02/opinion/how-the-tet-offensive-broke-america.html accessed on 18 April 2018

[2] Zelizer, Julian, “How the Tet Offensive Undermined American Faith in Government”, The Atlantic, 15 January, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/how-the-tet-offensive-undermined-american-faith-in-government/550010/ accessed on 18 April, 2018

[3] Moise, Edwin, The Tet Offensive Was Just the Beginning, The New York Times, 1 February, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/01/opinion/vietnam-war-tet-offensive-start.html, accessed on 18 April 2018

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[1] Atlas, Steve, “The Tet Offensive shocked the nation and permanently changed US attitudes toward the Vietnam War”, LBJs War, Public Radio International PRI, 11 October, 2017, https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-10-11/tet-offensive-shocked-nation-and-permanently-changed-us-attitudes-toward-vietnam accessed on 18 April 2018

[2] Ibid.